10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About The World Heavyweight Championship

WWE loves to hold onto its history.

Remember when Edge and Randy Orton fought through that warehouse at the Performance Centre at WrestleMania 36? There's plenty more like it where the entire history of WWE is archived for absolutely nobody to see. There's missing items of course, that's how they can produce shows like Most Wanted Treasures.

What WWE has less control over is the history of companies it now holds the rights to. Despite owning the entire WCW library, WWE doesn't own the brand's complete history.

That's where the Big Gold Belt comes in. WWE used it as the World Heavyweight Championship, but it existed for almost 20 years before Vince McMahon got his hands on it.

The original belt was commissioned for Jim Crockett Promotions and had a brown strap. By the time WCW was close to closing, they'd begun using replicas, which is why the title sometimes looks gold, often looks silver, and would regularly be thrown around like a prop.

Over the years, lots of people claimed to own the original belt. Hulk Hogan said he took it when he left Bash At The Beach 1999. Scott Steiner thought he'd stolen it after switching it with a replica. The full story has never come out, but Conrad Thompson, who co-hosts most wrestling podcasts, has said he bought it for $60,000 in the parking lot of a Home Depot. The belt has been confirmed as the real one because of very specific damage to it.

It's a strange situation but one WWE won't like. Having added Big Gold to their long history, they might never be able to say they have the original belt.